Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Bad timing

The unfortunate timing of 5B4's review of Fallen Books last Tuesday still has me shaken up. On the same day that Haiti was brought to its knees by a 7.0 earthquake, Jeff Ladd reviewed a book about earthquake damaged libraries?

Yes, fallen books may be a minor tragedy which I'm sure all photographers can relate to. Books are precious. But compared to what happened in Haiti, the subject seems perversely unimportant. Those folks aren't worried about a few overturned shelves. They're sorting through corpses.

from 5B4's review of Fallen Books

I don't think the timing was intentional. My guess is that Ladd had the review in the pipeline that day and posted it before hearing about the Haiti quake. But a week later, it's still hanging out there in cyberspace like some slightly rotten fruit, attracting no comments, waiting to be reshelved.

4 comments:

"We’ll have a few copies of Violet Isle, The Glass Between Us, and the out-of-print, Under a Grudging Sun (Haiti) available for the signing afterwards. Hope to see some of you there. –– Alex and Rebecca"

I'm a man...who uses a mouse to compose emails such as this one sent this morning:

Hi Jeff,

Sorry if I came down hard on the Fallen Books review. I know the timing wasn't intentional and I wasn't offended but I just couldn't get over the bizarre pairing of the two things so I had to write a note about it. I compared Haiti's situation to the minor tragedy of fallen books but really all of photography seems petty when compared to what's going on there. I guess I'd been thinking along those lines and was in a sour mood and it came out in the post, but no hard feelings. I still love 5B4.